Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Building up Igor Strelkov’s Myth: A Call to Arms for Russian Nationalists

By Sofia Yasen

The Russian publishing house Knizhnyy Mir recently released a book about Igor Girkin
(a.k.a. Strelkov), the military leader of the pro-Russia separatist forces in
the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic (kmbook.ru,
accessed August 4). The title of the book is
Igor Strelkov—The Horror of the
Banderovite Junta.Defense of
Donbas (Igor Strelkov—uzhas
banderovskoy khunty. Oborona Donbasa).
Even though part of the book is advertised as including direct excerpts
from Strelkov’s dairy, which he allegedly kept during the fighting in Slovyansk,
the veracity of this text is unclear. Mikhail Polikarpov, who claims to have known
Igor Strelkov for a long time, wrote the rest of the book.

Polikarpov provides no clear confirmation that he is, indeed, using Strelkov’s own
words. In one place he claims to quote posts by a blogger with the online
pseudonym of Kotych, who is said to be an alter ego of Strelkov. In places
where Kotych’s cited text appears to deviate from Strelkov’s normal style, Polikarpov
emphasizes the possibility that Strelkov’s account may have been hacked. Interestingly,
one of the interviews with Strelkov that is found in the book asserts that he
visited Kyiv during the Euromaidan street protests against the Viktor
Yanukovych government.

Any questions as to whether the author tried to verify the information he
presents in his book lose all meaning the deeper the reader progresses in the
text. It quickly becomes apparent that Polikarpov’s book is not meant to
provide unbiased information but, rather, is clear propaganda. Within the first
few pages, it praises the Russian “volunteer” soldiers who, in the early 1990s,
fought for the separatist Moldovan region of Transnistria, which the author identifies
as the first independent element of “Novorossiya” (“New Russia”— Moscow’s
political project to create a pro-Russia separatist region, mainly out of territories
carved out of southeastern Ukraine).

Largely unknown prior to the outbreak of war in eastern Ukraine, Strelkov—an
avid war reenactor and former Federal Security Service (FSB) operative—obtained
real battle experience in Transnistria, Bosnia, Chechnya and Dagestan (see EDM,
July 21). Igor Strelkov portrays him as
an exemplar for his methods of warfare in the Ukraine, and in one section even
elevates Strelkov to that of a modern day Alexander Suvorov, referring to the
famous Russian military commander who served under Catherine the Great. On the
other hand, the book describes the leaders of the Kyiv government as “pro-Western
agents.” Polikarpov also openly disparages Ukraine’s armed forces. In
discussing the Ukrainian soldiers, the author exclusively refers to Strelkov’s purported
online posts, which are written in a mocking tone and accuse the Ukrainian
troops of drunkenness, unprofessionalism and murders of innocent civilians.

The book heavily reflects extreme Russian nationalist views. For one thing, it
claims that the Ukrainian language is artificial. Furthermore, the word “Ukrainians”
rarely appears in the text at all, which instead utilizes such ethnic slurs as “Ukry,”
“Ukropy” or “Khokhly.” One of the concluding sections in the book dwells on the
alleged ideological weakness of the people from eastern Ukraine. The author concludes
that Russians have an obligation to help eastern Ukrainians return to a normal
life in a big Russian family.

Igor Strelkov finishes by presenting
interviews with Strelkov and his close associates, who portray him as a brave
officer, idealist, monarchist and a new hero of our time, who is believed to be
the only person able to bring about a wave of renewal to Vladimir Putin’s
Russia. The book also includes demands for Putin to send Russian armed forces
into eastern Ukraine to support the pro-Russia rebels, who, according to the
author, are desperately waiting for Russian help.

It is worth noting that Igor Strelkov
is only oneof several new pro-Kremlin and anti-Ukrainian books that
were released this year by the publisher Knizhnyy Mir. Among them are such
books as, Novorossiya: Risen From the Ashes
(kmbook.ru,
accessed August 4), Crimea Is Forever With
Russia (kmbook.ru
accessed August 4), Neo-Nazis &
Euromaidan: From Democracy to Dictatorship (kmbook.ru,
accessed August 4), etc. Each book has its own target audience. For example, Neo-Nazis & Euromaidan was
translated into English and, according to Voice of Russia, was presented to the
public in Belgium one day after President Petro Poroshenko signed Ukraine’s
Association Agreement and free trade pact with the European Union (Voice of Russia, June 29).

Polikarpov’s book
on Igor Strelkov was initially released in 2,000 copies, suggesting that the
author does not expect it to be read by the wider Russian audience. But a large
audience was likely not his goal. Rather, the romanticization of the Russian “volunteers”
participating in various conflicts across the post-Soviet area, with which Igor Strelkov opens, as well as the descriptions
of Strelkov’s struggle to find new volunteers for the ongoing conflict in
Ukraine’s Donbas, might conceal a hidden intention.

The
author leaves the reader with no doubts that the new Russian “hero,” Strelkov—a
man brave enough to stand up to “American-Ukrainian Fascists”—will find a bigger
number of the followers soon. Such a conclusion makes it clear that the main
goal of the book is not only to guide the narrative on the Ukraine conflict,
but also to become a call to those Russian nationalists and/or veterans, who
still have not joined the armed struggle over eastern Ukraine. They are, thus,
the main audience for Igor Strelkov, and
they are Strelkov’s best hope. Consequently, the book illustrates the critical importance
of informational war to the Russian side in the Ukraine conflict.

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